Copper Kettle game oldest ongoing high school rivalry in Arizona

By: Susanne Jerome Staff Writer - Updated: 1 month ago

Posted Oct 25, 2018

The Globe Miami football game has galvanized both towns since time out of living memory.

According to Globe’s archivist, Dee Hunt, the first football game between Globe and Miami was in 1923, but the rivalry was much older and resulted in gang fights and vandalism to the extent that the governing boards of both schools had vetoed the idea of a game. But Hunt discovered a Nov. 4, 1927 edition of the Globe school newspaper, “The Papoose”, that stated 1927 was the year of the first official game.

At any rate, it stands as the longest high school rivalry in state history since the two high schools in Bisbee- Douglas combined, bringing theirs to the end. The unofficial 1923 game is said to have resulted in a 48-0 win for Miami, which had a football program. Globe, it is said, scared up a team for the event but didn’t actually get a coach until the next year.

The beginning of the football rivalry predated the Copper Kettle and the creation of the Miami M, and the Globe G, which appeared in 1934 to stand as avatars for the school buildings themselves, which were being vandalized every year in celebration of the game. (Although, even in recent years, rival schools are still being decorated with graffiti in “honor” of opposing schools.)

An article in the 1927 Papoose said that as Armistice day (the modern Veterans Day) celebrated the ending of violence in 1918, so the Armistice Day Globe-Miami game should mark the end of the violent aspects of the rivalry between Globe and Miami.

It wasn’t until 1947 that the Copper Kettle joined the fray when Miami fans sought a symbol of victory to be contended for. Globe and Miami craftsmen made the kettle of pure copper and every year since then it has remained on display at the school that won it in the previous year’s game. Every year another copper leaf is added to a chain connecting to the kettle with the year and the score. The kettle is displayed at halftime and is presented by the losing team to the winning team at the end of the game.

Talk to Globe or Miami alumni and you will get fairly hair-raising stories of past rivalries. One respectable Miami graduate spoke about how he and his friends ran up to Globe police who were just arriving and pointed away and yelling, “They went that way!” tactfully leaving before any questions about who the “they” were who were trying to burn the G.

Hunt told of her son Brett Hunt, a 1998 graduate, and friends, up by the Globe G near the game time, who noticed that a red dot had appeared on someone’s forehead. A Man they didn’t know asked them if they were from Miami or Globe. Upon hearing them fervently claim Globe allegiance, he told them to wear more orange next time.

Later, when he was deployed for Desert Storm, Brett Hunt learned that Globe had lost the Copper Kettle, as his mother tells it, he was outraged that those so-in-so’s had lost the kettle.

Globe has won more games than Miami over 94 years, 56-35 with three ties, but each year is up for grabs. Each team is 4-4 in their conferences this year.

In 2017 Globe trounced Miami 40-12, but in 2015 Miami won 25-6. And in 2010, Miami won 34-8.